That difference in heights is the difference between cabinets using rails with decorative lips on them and those that don't. Doepfer, Intellijel and many others use the rails with the decorative lips on them that then make the inner height smaller than the official 3U height spec (the "lips" take away space). Those makers that use rails without lips (primarily the Vector style rails) space the rails closer than 3U to compensate for this and line up with the holes in the standard Doepfer panel.. This is the main reason for the big format war on 1U tiles between the Intelijel format and the Pulp Logic one. Pulp Logic designed their 1U tiles to use the full 1U spacing (on lipless rails) and Intellijel, who already made cabinets with lipped rails, made their designs to use lipped rails.

I too use your case, it’s amazingly compact and although cramped in terms of wiring, I really appreciated the preburned/semi-cut holes in the case, I’m clearly not finished yet but in terms of prototyping a nice ergonomic layout they have been a godsend. My only suggestion would be to have the same halfcuts for an OLED included in your future designs, be they eurorack or standalone.

even though the axolotis technically aren't in there yet, here's a preview of the current state of my synth prototyping enclosure:in the end i will have around 5 axolotis in there. started documenting the build on muffwiggler, if anybody is interested:https://www.muffwiggler.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=227097

haha thanks, yeah.. 3 axoxlotis do all the actual DSP. all the encoders, keyboard, led rings etc aree not handledd by axolotis but rather midibox and teensy boards, all communicates via midi internally

it was this one from amazon although it seems to no longer be available from that seller, it is a fairly common item available from lots of other places it lists the dimensions as 11.8 x 7.8 x 0.7 cm, but will measure and get back to you

hah this look like an inverted version of my "tower of power"but i agree with @tele_player and @Ersatzplanet, in an eurorack context the direct axoloti connectors don't make too much sense without scaling circuits.

but i agree with @tele_player and @Ersatzplanet, in an eurorack context the direct axoloti connectors don't make too much sense without scaling circuits.

Weasel79 - There are a new breed of small skiff-like cabinets showing up in the Eurorack market, a project like yours would be perfect for them. A small stand-alone rig just as big as that panel, or that panel with a bunch of pre-amps next to it.

sorry i will keep posting updated protoype iterations of my synth. mostly to show off and make myself feel good, but hey, maybe someone feels inspired by it.

this one is 1.4mm black cardboard, on top of 3mm mdf. i wanted to explore some new materials cause i know these prototypes don't last long anyways. the cardboard feels insanely nice and looks good too but obviously wouldn't stand the tests of time. because i was too impatient to have the lasercutter do a full engraving of the labels (takes long af) i decided to just lsaer the outlines of the typo, and trace it by hand with a fine metallic marker. thats why it looks so sloppy. which adds a certain charme to me though.

I think it looks great, and I love the use of alternate materials.Just yesterday I suggested to a friend that he laminate thick poster board as the panel material for a Soma Lyra-8 that he's almost completed.

Maybe when you get to the final stage you can make the panel out of black PCB material. There are plenty of Eurorack modules with black PCB front panels and the silkscreening all done by the board house. Many have sections where LEDs shine through bare sections of the PCB material and make great lit shapes and such. Front Panel Express would be my real choice of course, but that would be a fair chunk of change at that point. It would be the thing to do when it gets finalized for sure.